Success?

So originally Sergio was going to be sent home, but instead they told him he gets to keep all his education money, will not be fined, will not get extra instruction, but will leave a week early. I'd heard a rumor-- only a rumor-- that they're going to fly him home a week and then fly him back for graduation, the missing of which was interpreted to be part of his punishment in the first place, as I guess he badly wanted to go, or something.

University of Maryland in College Park accepted me for the Fall 2009 semester but I don't really intend to go. After some application issues I called George Washington University's office and the supervisor I spoke to said that she would fix my issue and that she's the one who decides who gets in in October for the Spring 2010 semester and my application is "more than satisfactory." I think I'm still going to apply to Harvard this September though. Now I'm waiting for the Department of State to get back to me about my spring internship, and waiting to get accepted somewhere to apply for the Boren scholarship. I was thinking about learning Arabic in Morocco or Egypt, but if you sign a waiver you can go to a nation with a travel advisory. The psychotic, instigated-by-GI-Kat part of me is strongly tempted to go to Iran to learn Farsi. Kat, MD, loathes the notion that I'd get this scholarship at all, after being apart from her for 10 months of AmeriCorps.

We completely failed to build/buy the forest service a going-away gift, and while everyone conceptually agreed to repainting the shoddy wooden basketball hoop, I was the only one willing to get up on the ladder and do it. I slapped on a coat of white paint and meant to return to it and put the AmeriCorps logo on it, and then Coby said we should do both the A and the USFS shield, and then it never got done and I left the paint out and presumably one of the seasonals cleaned up the mess I left out. I feel only the mildest levels of guilt, partly because they still haven't gotten us the really spiffy wool-lined Carhartt jackets they buy each AmeriCorps class at the end of the program. Some of our supervisors are coming to our graduation, though-- maybe we'll get them then, instead of mailed to our homes.

I volunteered one last time at the movie theatre-- The Taking of Pelham 123 was surprisingly okay-- and I dropped into the crystal shop and said goodbye to Scott Harrison. We were originally supposed to work on the carousel that day but it fell through. I made ricotta-and-Parmesan lemon gnocchi for Mo, talked about AmeriCorps and what I'm going to do afterward. They let me know that if I ever returned to Nederland that I could stay in a room in the basement-- and seemed surprised that I slept on the couch. Unbeknownst to me, I had taken the dog's usual sleeping spot, ha. At about seven I took a bus from Nederland to Boulder, another to Denver, and then the light rail and a two-mile walk back to campus, since everyone else wanted to leave in the early afternoon; I arrived at about 9:30pm, with only a few minutes' downtime between any given transfer.

This schedule here says I actually leave at 10:00am on July 23, and not on the 24th. It looks like we walk right off the graduation stage and into the vans to shuttle to the airport. Huh.

I give blood for the first time ever tomorow morning.

Eleven days left.